Epis­ode Num­ber: 7×04

Writ­ten by: Tony Pi

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 7^th March 2026

Guest Stars:

• Com­mand­er N’Ria: Klin­gon chief med­ic­al officer of Star­base 364.
• Cap­tain T’V­in: Vul­can com­mand­ing officer of the U.S.S. Touch­stone.
• Cap­tain Emili­ano Taf­farel: Human com­mand­ing officer of the U.S.S. Kur­osawa.

It looks like a num­ber of the events of the last few years are tied togeth­er, and that our occa­sion­al ally Com­mand­er Sig­mund may be at the heart of them. I think I need to talk to the admir­al to see if she can provide any addi­tion­al con­text to this appar­ent conspiracy.

Com­modore Atani Kon­in’s Per­son­al Log: Stard­ate, 52040.0

Plot: Kon­in con­sults with the admir­al, while his crew deal with a per­plex­ing repair issue.

The ‘A’ Plot: On Lex­ing­ton’s bridge, Raynor receives a com­mu­nic­a­tion from Star­base 364 traffic con­trol: a star­ship, the U.S.S. Touch­stone, is approach­ing one of the dry­docks for repairs, but requires assist­ance. It has suffered extens­ive dam­age to its port side, affect­ing its man­oeuv­rab­il­ity. Lex­ing­ton is reques­ted to help guide it into dock.

Zohir, cur­rently occupy­ing the chair, quickly agrees, and Quinn takes the ship towards the dam­aged ves­sel. Raynor attaches a tract­or beam and they begin tow­ing the Touch­stone towards the dock. Unfor­tu­nately, their con­trol is not per­fect, and the ship hits the side of the struc­ture. The dam­age is minor, but as Quinn tries to cor­rect for the impact, a sequence of rain­bow-col­oured lights ripples across the scene, and the Touch­stone vanishes.

In its place is an Akira-class cruis­er, stuck at an odd angle through the dry­dock­’s struc­ture, the sup­port beams pier­cing its hull in mul­tiple places. Requests for res­cue and sup­port start pil­ing up on Raynor’s con­sole imme­di­ately; there are engin­eers trapped in parts of the dock, and mem­bers of the cruis­er­’s crew are also trapped. The new arrival is the U.S.S. Kur­osawa, and its cap­tain, Emili­ano Taf­farel, is report­ing that many of his crew are cut off from safety by bulky spars cross­ing rooms and corridors.

The entire com­plex of Kur­osawa, dry­dock and Lex­ing­ton (still attached by tract­or beams) is spin­ning unpre­dict­ably, for­cing Quinn to under­take a com­plex series of man­oeuvres to sta­bil­ise it. Azon­an accom­pan­ies emer­gency teams on to the stricken cruis­er, to begin dis­aster recov­ery oper­a­tions. He is soon work­ing closely with the Kur­osawa’s chief engin­eer to sta­bil­ise the warp core and begin get­ting the sys­tems back online.

Taf­farel briefs Lex­ing­ton’s officers on what happened: the ship was return­ing from a battle near the Car­das­si­an front lines, and col­lided with an unseen sub­space anom­aly. Ninety minutes later, while they were still assess­ing dam­age to their star­board sau­cer and nacelle, there was a flash, and they were trans­por­ted to this loc­a­tion. He is very sur­prised to find out where the ship is.

Recov­ery oper­a­tions con­tin­ue for the next hour, but then there is anoth­er sequence of rain­bow flashes, and the Kur­osawa van­ishes. When the glare fades, the stricken ship has been replaced by the Touch­stone, still float­ing in its ori­gin­al ori­ent­a­tion. This is at an angle to the dock­’s cur­rent pos­i­tion, and there is more dam­age from spars impal­ing the vessel.

Azon­an, mean­while, finds him­self float­ing in space. For­tu­nately, he is with­in easy reach of the Touch­stone’s hull and is able to pull him­self to a nearby air­lock. Lex­ing­ton’s trans­port­er team react quickly, beam­ing oth­er stran­ded per­son­nel to safety.

With the imme­di­ate emer­gency over, Cap­tain T’V­in of the Touch­stone con­tacts the Lex­ing­ton to com­pare notes. She relates that her ves­sel was appar­ently trans­por­ted to the Alpha Quad­rant, some­where near Betazed, and believes that there was some level of mat­ter exchange between the two locations.

By this time, Kon­in has fin­ished his meet­ing with the admir­al, and moves to coordin­ate oper­a­tions from the sta­tion’s oper­a­tions deck. Selvek, his team and the sci­ent­ists on the sta­tion are already work­ing on the­or­ies, and T’V­in shares her ship’s sensor data in the hope that it will help resolve the situ­ation. They note that there was a large verter­on flux at the time of trans­ition, which indic­ates that a worm­hole was prob­ably involved. Selvek notes also, that all of the Kur­osawa’s per­son­nel have van­ished, even those in Lex­ing­ton’s sick­bay.

Forty minutes after the Touch­stone’s reappear­ance, there is anoth­er flash, and the star­ship is replaced by the Kur­osawa once more. Selvek now advances the the­ory that the two ships are some­how entangled at a quantum level, envel­oped in a sub­space bubble, and are exchan­ging places via a micro­scop­ic worm­hole. A rise in verter­on out­put indic­ates the onset of the next trans­ition, but the peri­od between trans­itions is redu­cing by 33.173244% with each repe­ti­tion. It is unclear what will hap­pen when the peri­od drops to seconds, but it is unlikely to be pleas­ant for those involved.

Frantic work begins on find­ing a way to undo the entan­gle­ment. Quinn sug­gests they could use a large energy dis­charge to col­lapse the worm­hole, while Selvek pro­poses a more cau­tious meth­od­ic­al dis­rup­tion of the entan­gle­ment effect. They opt for the energy dis­charge, pro­ject­ing the energy from the nav­ig­a­tion­al deflect­or. Quinn will rotate the Kur­osawa and the attached dry­dock so that, when Touch­stone reappears, the dock will be around rather through the hull.

The pre­par­a­tions take them a while, and 25 minutes after the Touch­stone’s dis­ap­pear­ance, the verter­on levels begin to rise again. The dis­charge has to be fired at the pre­cise moment the worm­hole opens, for­cing a rush to com­plete the process.

The oper­a­tion is a suc­cess, and the Kur­osawa dis­ap­pears, leav­ing the Touch­stone in place, with­in the drydock.

Later com­mu­nic­a­tions from the Alpha Quad­rant con­firm the the Kur­osawa is safe, and its cap­tain sends his gratitude.

The ‘B’ Plot: Kon­in vis­its the med­ic­al centre on the star­base, ask­ing for a meet­ing with Com­mand­er N’Ria, the Klin­gon chief med­ic­al officer. She agrees to see him, emer­ging from the wards where she has been coordin­at­ing the treat­ment of those injured in the Vin­Shari assault. Kon­in asks to see Vice Admir­al Hebert, and she refuses, explain­ing that her recov­ery is depend­ent on her not being exposed to work-related stress. Kon­in lies, say­ing he’s only there to see her as a friend, and N’Ria relents, allow­ing him to visit.

Hebert is sat up in bed, heav­ily band­aged but look­ing alert. Kon­in begins with the usu­al pleas­ant­ries, but when the nurse leaves them to talk, he pro­duces one of Star­fleet Intel­li­gence’s anti-bug­ging devices, recently acquired by Chief Boone for this meet­ing. He broaches the sub­ject of the raid and the asso­ci­ated con­spir­acy, and Hebert points out she is not sup­posed to be talk­ing about any­thing of the sort, then tells him to lock the door and activ­ate the gadget.

He explains what he has dis­covered and she agrees that his con­clu­sions make sense. She tells him that Cap­tain Helt­in Adred dis­ap­peared less than 24 hours after he had revealed his true iden­tity to her, and related his sus­pi­cions that the ruins at Orgun were related to those dis­covered by the ori­gin­al U.S.S. Lex­ing­ton in the 23^rd cen­tury. She explains that Lex­ing­ton was assigned to work with Com­modore Banna Stoker, whom his­tory sub­sequently labelled mad for her attempts to track down an unknown ancient civilisation.

Kon­in changes the sub­ject and asks about the Gor­gon, point­ing out that the reports of radi­ation on the wreck were inac­cur­ate, and ask­ing if she had issued the destruc­tion order to cov­er up some­thing. Hebert is con­fused by this, as the order had come from Star­fleet Oper­a­tions, and was inten­ded to ensure the safety of ship­ping in the region.

Kon­in relates Com­modore Reyes’s alleg­a­tions of a con­nec­tion to the mys­ter­i­ous “Sec­tion 31”. She pauses, and then explains that Sec­tion 31 is really just a rumour, often dis­cussed but with no evid­ence. She does find it odd that the high­er the rank, the more likely an officer is likely to believe it. Accord­ing to the his­tory books, there was a Sec­tion 31 in the United Earth Gov­ern­ment’s intel­li­gence ser­vice pri­or to the Fed­er­a­tion’s found­ing, and by the 23^rd cen­tury, it was a depart­ment with­in Star­fleet Intel­li­gence ded­ic­ated to pre­vent­ing unre­cog­nised threats. It was dis­ban­ded after the Red Angel Incid­ent, but the rumours say it went under­ground, and might even still be part of Star­fleet Intel­li­gence. Kon­in notes that the ori­gin­al Adred was sup­posed to have died when the ship was des­troyed. Maybe Sec­tion 31 was respons­ible for that event? The Tilikaal would def­in­itely count as an “unre­cog­nised threat”.

He brings up Com­mand­er Sig­mund and Hebert admits that she has always been dif­fi­cult to pin down as to her respons­ib­il­it­ies and activ­it­ies. If Sec­tion 31 does indeed exist, it is entirely likely that she is an agent. This leads them to the mat­ter of Com­mand­er Zohir, and his rela­tion­ship with Sig­mund. Kon­in believes he is not aware of her poten­tial alle­gi­ance, but he is com­prom­ised. He notes that he is about due for his own com­mand – would the admir­al have any ideas for a vacancy? Hebert responds that she should be able to find some­thing appropriate.

Kon­in switches off the device and leaves the room, receiv­ing a mes­sage from his daugh­ter almost imme­di­ately. She’s stran­ded in one of the drydocks…

The Arc: Intel­li­gence is shared, and the­or­ies formed.

Obser­va­tions: The U.S.S. Touch­stone is an Excel­si­or-class cruis­er, assigned to the 20^th Fleet. The U.S.S. Kur­osawa is an Akira-class ship, oper­at­ing on the front lines of the Domin­ion War.

Ref­er­ences: Sec­tion 31 made its first appear­ance in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine epis­ode “Inquis­i­tion”.

A large burst of energy has been used to close a worm­hole before. The U.S.S. Lyo­n­esse encountered an expand­ing worm­hole in the Black Cluster in 2295, and col­lapsed it by det­on­at­ing the warp­core of the S.S. Atlantis.

Ques­tions: What is Sec­tion 31 up to?